time to blog

It is the first day back to work after the Christmas break, it is minus five degrees Celsius outside and the heating in my house stopped working last night. That being said, I’m feeling very happy and over the last week I’ve been ‘chomping at the bit’ to get back to work.

Why I hear you ask? Well after years of work, the first version of the timetotrade algorithmic trading product is nearly ready to go live; and it is very good. There are also a range of feature enhancements and bug fixes, all of which will go live in the coming weeks. I will wait until then before I say more.

On a side note we have just updated the ‘Import Manual’, as timetotrade now provides accounting support for shares, funds, forex and spread betting transactions. We have had to add some additional fields to enable the importation of spread betting and forex transactions, therefore you will have to update any import templates that you use.

Over the Christmas break I read a fascinating book that was first publish in 1923 called Reminiscences of a Stock Operator. The book is biography of one of the most outstanding traders of his day, Jesse Livermore. It charts his rise from his first winnings of $3.12 at the age of 15 in 1892 up to the $100 million fortune accumulated after the markets crashed in 1929. If you think ‘Spread Betting’ is a new fangled invention, then think again. Jesse Livermore was banned from every ‘Bucket Shop’, as they where known in those days, on the West coast of America. It was not a one way ticket and he went bankrupt more than once, which makes his $100 million winnings in 1929 all the more amazing.

But less of that! Happy New Year and thank you for your ongoing support.

This is rather exciting.. actually it is very very exciting; I just got my first trend line alert from timetotrade!

This is a very important step, which marks the first phase in realising a new suite of charting, trading and accounting products that will be rolled out over the summer months.  Very exciting.

It has been a crazy two weeks of none stop work with everything coming together just in time for the Easter break. Well almost. Over the last week the timetotrade website performance had almost ground to a halt due to the continued growth in users.  Historically the number of timetotrade unique users has been growing at approximately 10% per month. But over the last 6+ months this has accelerated dramatically, with unique users for example over the last 30 days up 23%; the best part is that these large double digit growth figures are becoming the norm rather than the exception.

This is great and thank you very much for your support, however the increased rate of growth is putting our IT infrastructure under a lot of pressure.  To address the performance issue, over the last week we have been re-writing sections of The River and Accounting features to optimise database queries, improve I/O performance and memory utilisation. The new optimise Accounting & Taxation code is now live with a number of bug fixes included.  In addition the new Tax forms required for submitting Investment Club and Private Investor tax returns for the year ending 5th of April 2009 are now available.  The initial enhancements of The River code has been deployed today (Thursday 9th of April 2009) with the main fixes due to go live after the Easter break; hopefully for now the responsiveness of the website will be acceptable while we finalise testing the next phase of enhancements to The River.

On a second front we are in the process of designing a new IT hardware infrastructure solution with higher performance servers distributed across two datacentres.  The new IT infrastructure will offer a significantly improved browsing experience with much improved service availability.  If everything goes according to plan the new solution will be built, tested and ready for use in May; until then we will work hard to optimise the performance of the existing solution.

You might ask why we are pushing out products so quickly; the bottom line is that we are aiming to have a range of core products deployed and stabilised by the end of the summer before we start executing the next phase of our business strategy.  Before we execute the next phase, the website and related products and services on offer must be stable.  The only way to know if they will be stable is to stress test them in a live environment over an extended period.  What is our strategy? What products will we be rolling out?  Well you will just have to wait and see, but I can assure you it will be worth the wait - well I hope so.  On that note I hope you have a great Easter break; I looking forward to catching up on some sleep..

It has just been one of those days.  Yesterday I sold the EURUSD pair at 1.36 with the intention of buying back at 1.3370.  We have been working around the clock to get a new version of timetotrade ready for release and last night in a state of exhaustion I decided that I just didn’t want to take a loss on the trade so I lowered my stop to 1.3580 and reduced my buy to 1.3470 just in case the forex market moved during the night.

I woke up around 6am to find I had stopped out and with a small profit of 20pips.  As I lay in bed pondering whether or not to re-enter the sell order, I decided to wait for a few hours and set about testing the new version of timetotrade that went live at midnight.  Despite testing the new version heavily before it went live and even reaching a rare state of ‘zaro bugs’ (a mythical state in software development), this morning the new software load went pear-shape.

To make matters worse, last night’s closing buy order at 1.3470 was not cancelled when the stop triggered, which resulted in a 120 pip loss as I unwound the position. I was not impressed to say the least; I mean really really not impressed, especially when my initial strategy was bang on the money.  On a plus note I made 249 pips over the last few days, so I shouldn’t complain, but I really do hate losing so heavily over something so stupid as a wrong order entry.

So currently I’m now long on the GBPUSD pair at 1.4314 and debating what to do on the EURUSD pair.  When I say debating, it is more of a case of talking to myself, which probably isn’t very healthy.  As I ponder this the developers are busy debugging timetotrade and I’m writing this blog entry, to stop me hovering over them like an anxious Father waiting on a child to be delivered.   Oh, almost forgot to mention the new ezine that we have been working on; click here to check it out.

The following article was published in the 31 January - 6 February 2008 edition in the Shares magazine. As ever a big thanks to the folks at Shares, especially the editor Steven Frazer.

Want to time your share sales to minimise your capital gains tax bill? A new website has been launched to help private investors get to grips with their tax liabilities. The site – www.timetotrade.co.uk – will give you an insight into how HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) will treat your gains.

Developed by Sensatus, the portal takes into account indexation, taper relief on Aim shares as well as factoring in the impact of offsetting losses made on other shares. It’ll give you an idea of whether if you were to sell now you would exceed your £9,200 annual tax exempt allowance for the tax year ending 5 April 2008.

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The following abstract, is from an article written by Elaine Moore that was published in the weekend edition of the Financial Times on the 19th of January 2008. A big thank you to Elaine Moore and Matthew Vincent who is the new editor of FT Money.

Last year 3m people filled in their self-assessment tax form online. According to the Revenue, many more are expected to do so this year. So it looks as if the writing is on the wall for any remaining Luddites still stuck ticking boxes in black ink.

The deadline for payment of all tax owed, and for sending in completed tax returns for the 2006-07 tax year, is January 31.

But for the next tax year everything changes. Anyone filing a paper return for the 2007-08 year will have to send it in by October 31. Those who choose to file online will have until January 31 2009.

Online filing is convenient for HMRC because it saves it time spent entering data and logging returns sent by post. But there are a number of reasons why it’s good for you too.

“HMRC’s site has improved substantially over the years,” says John Whiting, tax partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers. “The design of the site means that if you click on certain boxes you will automatically be taken to the next relevant page.”

A handy feature of the site is that partially-filled forms can be saved and returned to later on if required. But the biggest incentive of filing online is that the site automatically calculates the tax you owe. There is also an automatic acknowledgement for all online forms, which may bring peace of mind if HMRC staff decide to strike on January 31 over job cuts.

The site covers most situations, but not all, according to Whiting. Those with large capital gains may have difficulty. However, a tool called timetotrade (www.timetotrade.co.uk) can help. It can give investors a view of their collective capital gains tax position in order to help them complete tax forms.

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The following news article was published by the Guardian’s Money Observer on the 17th of January 2008:

Investors looking for a helping hand with their tax liabilities before the tax return deadline on 31 January can get a helping hand with a new tax tool from website timetotrade.

The tool calculates investors’ capital gains and income tax liabilities for share-related transactions. Investors are given a birdseye view of their tax position and can model various investment disposal scenarios to maximise tax breaks and work within annual tax allowances.

The advanced Pro Package costs GBP19.99 a month or GBP199 a year. Visit www.timetotrade.co.uk

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The following news article was published in the What Investment Tax Planning section on the 14th of January 2008. As ever a big thank you to the editor Keiron Root.

Timetotrade.eu has launched a new tax management product that helps investors calculate and manage their capital gains tax (CGT) and income tax liabilities for share-related transactions.

In preparation for the 31 January tax return deadline, Timetotrade calculates investors’ capital gains and losses based on the HMRC share identification rules.

It includes support for indexation, taper relief, and offsets current and brought forward losses against gains to determine your tax liability.

The tax tools help investors complete self-assessment CGT and income tax returns and generate UK Inland Revenue form 185 for investment clubs.

Dary McGovern, managing director of Sensatus, the developers behind Timetotrade, says: ‘We have been working closely with private investors and the UK Shareholders Association during the development of Timetotrade. In doing so, it quickly became apparent that a solution was needed that would help investors determine their tax liability.’

To access the tax tools, visit www.timetotrade.eu

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Currently in timetotrade we are working on a fundamentals products that we will begin beta testing in the coming weeks. As part of the development of the product, we have carried out a lot of research into the correlation between price and fundamentals.

All I can say for now, is that the results have been extraordinary! We will be writing a paper on our findings when the fundamentals product is ready for market, but until then I will say no more.

To put the research to the test, I entered the Share Crazy Trading Places competition in September 2007. The competition involved five contestants plus Share Crazy’s Joe Public and we were each given £1,000,000 to invest in an imaginary portfolio. At the start of the series, we each had to pick five stocks and every week on a given day, we had to sell one stock and buy another; that meant no stop losses, limit buy or sell orders, position sizing or risk management.

The show started on the 26th of September 2007 and finished on the 14th of December 2007, and every Wednesday I had to ‘kick out’ one stock and buy another. You can view the shows by clicking on the following links:

• Week 1
• Week 2
• Week 3
• Week 4
• Week 5
• Week 6
• Week 7
• Week 8
• Week 9
• Week 10
• Week 11
• Week 12
• Finale

So does the new fundamentals product work? I’ll let you decide:

The beta trial of the new timetotrade fundamentals product will begin in the coming weeks and will be available to all timetotrade users for free during the beta test phase. To set up a timetotrade account click on one of the following links:

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According to Andy Warhol “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes”. Apparently it is also said that, “everything comes to he who waits” or as an entry on The Retail Blog phased it, “everything comes to he who waits, as long as he works like hell while he waits”.

At Sensatus we have been working round the clock and it turns out Andy Warhol was right, well almost. The Sensatus Investment Club got its fifteen minutes of fame on the BBC News; to be more precise one minute and fifty nine seconds of fame.

The Sensatus Investment club have been considering some alternative investments, such as wine. To help understand how to invest in wine, Paul Dudley from Vinum Investments offered to travel to Brighton to talk us through it. At the same time Nigel Cassidy from the BBC was looking for some light hearted news over the Christmas period and came along to film the event.

We met up with Paul at a speciality wine merchant in Brighton called Quaff, which is run by Toby Peirce. If you find yourself in Brighton looking for a really good bottle of wine (or you can buy online), you will be very impressed by what Quaff have to offer.

As for investing in wine, it really does sound like a good proposition and an excellent way of adding some diversity to our investment portfolio; to check out some of what Paul had to say on investing in wine and to meet some of the Sensatus Investment Club, check out the following piece that was broadcast on BBC News. If you are looking for more information on investing in wine, click here to get in contact Paul from Vinum Investments.

Best wishes for the New Year from everyone at Sensatus.

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